On Toby's Terms
by Charmaine Hammond

When Charmaine and her husband adopted Toby, a five-and-a-half-year-old Chesapeake Bay retriever, they figured he might need some adjusting time, but they certainly didn’t count on what he’d do in the meantime. Turns out that Toby was a holy terror, beset by severe anxiety and destructive behavior that would take a miracle to curb: he routinely opened and emptied the hall closet, turned on water taps, knocked over the water cooler, pulled and ate things from the bookshelves, and spent his days rampaging through the house, knocking down everything in his path. Oddest of all was his penchant for locking himself in the bathroom, and then push the lid of the toilet tank onto the floor, smashing it to pieces.